Beauty in the Beast (6 page)

He glanced at me. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

I raised my eyebrows in an expression I hoped look wryly humorous, but probably looked startled. “I’ve been in worse.”

His gaze dropped to my bare feet, which I rubbed warmth into vigorously. He shrugged off his coat. I began to protest, but he said, “Put it on.”

I did. It still held his warmth, and I hugged it tightly around myself, tucking its edges under my legs. If he was cold, it did not show in the way he draped his lean arms over his knees or sat steadily against the wind. His shoulders were rounded, but more as if against a great weight than against the chill.

By the dim light of a gas lamp, I could see that snow had begun to cover the stomper. I hoped that Miles had remembered to pull the canvas over the sled, or we would be doing salvage duty tomorrow after digging the stomper out of the snow. I thought of my trunk of carefully folded dresses and winced at the thought of their dye running because of melted snow. I shook my head.
That’s the least of your worries, Tara.

I tried to tame my hair behind my ears, but the wind grabbed it and tossed it, stinging, against my face. I turned the collar of the coat up, breathing in the scents of Rolph and coat oil. I slid my hands into each opposite arm cuff.

When he spoke, I almost could not hear his voice over the storm, his words were so soft. “She was my wife. Those were our two little girls.”

My mouth went dry. I recalled their picture in my mind with sharp detail and waited for him to continue.

He stared at the backs of his hands, and I wondered if the same picture haunted him. “They died in a fire nine years ago.” His eyes closed. “It was my fault.”

I stared at him in the long silence that followed that confession, watching his hair dance around his face. I’m not sure that he breathed. I’m not sure that I did either.

Finally his eyes opened. “If I suffer a lifetime of this pain, it will not make up for their lives.”

I had no words, so I sat in silence with him, watching as the snow covered the last visible portions of the stomper. Sacrificing what was left of his life—his own chance for happiness—was not adequate payment for what had been lost. It only added to the tragedy. But I knew loss, and I knew remorse, and I was sure he didn’t need my pat words. I only hoped he didn’t take my silence as disapproval.

At length, he looked at me. “Please don’t tell your friends.”

I met his searching eyes. I could see now how he tensed against the cold. “Of course not.”

We stood, our bodies close. Before he could reach for the door, I clasped his hands. I wanted to say something meaningful, something comforting, but instead I blurted, “They’re shaking again!”

He snatched his hands back. The walls behind his eyes fell away for just a moment, and I stared into fear. One of the shaking hands reached out as if to touch my hair but pulled back. “Promise me you’ll stay inside tonight.”

The blood in my veins turned to ice. I nodded and swallowed, my cheek still aching in anticipation of the withdrawn caress.

He held the door open for me. In the light that spilled out, I could see that his face had gone pale. I ducked inside, avoiding his eyes.

He shut the door firmly behind us and said, “Good night.”

I stood helplessly as he disappeared down the hall, leaving me with my sleeping friends, wondering what had just happened. I hugged myself and thumped my forehead against the door to stare at my boots.

For a professional storyteller, I had a knack of finding the wrong words.

My friends breathed heavily, oblivious in sleep. Finally, I pulled off my boots and Rolph’s jacket, curling up on the floor with the pillow. I breathed in Rolph’s scent and closed my eyes, listening to the sounds of the storm and feeling the cold creep slowly over the fur-covered floor, thinking of him.

I woke to the smell of meat. Someone had restarted the fire and put the pot of stew on. I lay for a time and listened to nothing but the crackle of flames. After last night’s screaming winds, the quiet was almost profound.

At length, I sat up to find Miles and Fred gone. Only Beth was still asleep, curled under the blanket with one arm thrown over her face against the daylight that streamed over the floor. I tugged on my boots, which were now dry and warm, and stepped onto the back stoop.

Outside, the air was clear and still. Morning sunlight reflected off snow, bleaching the world white. I squinted.

The stomper had become a round hill. Someone stood upon it shoveling snow, and I recognized the blond hair as Fred’s. He waved at me almost ironically. I wondered how long he’d been shoveling.

“Where’s Miles?” I called.

Fred pointed down. I followed the gesture and spotted Miles’s feet sticking out from under the front of the stomper.

“Here,” said Miles, voice muffled. He scooted, banged himself, cursed and emerged. He dropped his forehead onto his palm and dangled his other arm over one knee.

I covered my mouth to muffle laughter.

Miles tossed his wrench to the ground. He stood, brushing snow from his clothes. “She’s broken. Ice cracked the pipes and the water tank.”

I stopped laughing. “We have the box of spare parts…”

“Not everything we need. We’re stranded until we fix her, and we can’t fix her till we have them.” He pushed back the lip of his knit cap and then pulled it straight again. Today, the cap was purple and rimmed with yellow diamonds.

“Perhaps Rolph will have parts…?”

Miles raised an eyebrow. “Do you think he keeps pipes and a water tank around?”

No, probably not. In fact, I doubted he had any spare parts at all. The rustic cabin seemed entirely devoid of machinery, as if the Industrial Revolution had never reached here.

“Have you seen him?”

Miles shook his head. I wondered if Rolph was still asleep. My thoughts turned to the look on his face just before he strode down the hall last night—pale and deeply unsettled—and then wondered if he’d gotten
any
sleep.

I took a walk around the cabin, soaking in the bright morning sun and feeling as if the hope of spring was not so very remote after all. The edge of the woods seemed less imposing by daylight. Frosted with snow, the trees almost seemed to shrink back into the horizon, silent and sleeping.

I stopped and tilted my face to the clouds. The wind carried the scent of blood. My eyes scanned the landscape, and I spotted a figure loping through the snow—Rolph carrying a string of rabbits.

I sat on a pile of wood at the side of the cabin and watched him approach, appreciating the gleaming brown of his hair in the sunlight. As he got closer, I noted that his gait was strong and his speed brisk. He held a hand up in greeting and swung the string of rabbits in front of him. They were already skinned. I looked for signs of strain on his face, but the day had smoothed away the fatigue and the worry lines. His skin glowed.

“How’s the stomper?”

I shook my head and tried not to stare at his warm honey eyes or track the curve of his dark eyebrows. “It’s broken. Do you keep spare parts?”

“Just a few,” he said, taking a course toward the back of the cabin.

I followed him past the almost comical scene of Fred shoveling endless snow and through the long stable. Rolph hung the rabbits from a hook near the kitchen door, then led me in.

“A few” was not an understatement. The collection of odd parts that Rolph brought into the living room was small, and some of what was there was rusted and brittle. Miles and Fred came in to rummage through them while Beth and I ate bowls of stew.

Miles sat back on his haunches. “I can’t use any of this.”

The four of us looked at each other awkwardly.

“What are we to do?” Beth looked toward the kitchen, where Rolph had disappeared. He had agreed to only one night. Now we were stranded.

Miles stood. “Well, our only option is to go on foot and beg our host to let us leave the stomper here. There’s no way we can move her.”

Rolph came in with rabbit furs. “Closest town is a day away by foot,” he said when we asked.

Miles looked at us. “We’ll have to leave now and pick up the parts we need there. The rest of you can stay in town while I return to fix the stomper. Hopefully, it won’t take too long, and I’ll meet back up with you. We might make it to the end of the Frost Fair.” He looked to Rolph. “Do you have a sled?”

A muscle tightened in Rolph’s jaw. He seemed to be thinking. For just an instant his eyes turned to me, then jumped back to Miles. “No. I’ll take you to town. We should be back before nightfall. Enough time for you to make your repairs.”

Miles nodded, his serious expression offset by the loud purple knit cap. “Very kind of you. I’m ready to leave when you are.”

“Actually,” I said, “you should stay here with the stomper. You have a lot of work to do on it, right? Even without the parts? You can get ahead with all of it and have as much done as possible by the time we return. I’ll go instead.”

I tried to look as if my suggestion was purely practical and not personal, although the butterflies in my stomach beat so hard they almost tickled a smile out of me.

Miles pursed his lips. “Fine. Fred, go with her.”

“But I’ll be with Rolph!”

“The parts are big. You’ll need at least two men.”

I crossed my arms, mildly insulted. I wasn’t weak. But I also wasn’t going to argue with Miles. I knew he had another reason for sending Fred, though
I
didn’t think I needed a chaperone.

* * *

As it turned out, the stable
did
house a creature—a horse mechanimal that slept under a thick canvas drape. I had never seen anything like it before. Its segmented metal neck curved proudly, though it was cold and motionless and obviously had not been used in some time. Brown autumn leaves still littered the floor around its wide hooves.

Rolph owned a wagon to go with the horse. Beth and I took twenty minutes to unbury it from the snow and dust it clean, and it was another hour before Rolph had filled the horse’s tank with water, fired up its boiler, greased its joints and hitched it to the wagon.

I was wondering how we’d get the wagon through the deep snow when Rolph appeared with a long panel of metal and hooked it to the chest of the horse. Two metal supports held it out at an angle, and each end of the panel was bent back, creating a shield. As I watched him tighten each leather strap, I realized we would be driving our way through the snow.

“Almost ready,” he said and returned to the cabin.

Fred took two pillows and a blanket from our sled and arranged them in the back of the wagon. “There. We’ll be snug as can be.”

“You will. I’m sitting up front.”

“You won’t keep me warm?”

I stepped into the front. “Someone needs to keep the driver company.”

Rolph and Miles appeared a minute later, Miles carrying the cracked water tank from the stomper and Rolph balancing an armful of broken pipes. Rolph’s eyes fixed on me from across the yard, taking in my choice of seat. He looked away as he approached.

Miles and Rolph dumped the broken pieces into the back of the wagon beside Fred’s makeshift bed.

“Hey, now!”

Miles smoothly ignored him. “Sell what you can for scrap metal. But only after you’ve bought the new parts, because you might need them to show the shop clerk.” He handed a pouch and a folded sheet of paper to Fred. “This is almost the last of our savings, along with a detailed list of what I’ll need.”

As Rolph stepped up to the driver’s side, I pretended to busy myself with my boot laces. I sensed him pause with his hands on the wagon and hoped he noticed that I had changed into my blue skirt. I pulled up its hem just enough to fiddle with my laces, but not quite far enough to bare my ankle.

The wagon shuddered as he stepped up, and my stomach fluttered as he settled beside me. His body radiated heat like a boiler.

I opened my mouth to greet him, but Beth stepped up to my side of the wagon and clasped my hands. “Be careful!”

I squeezed her fingers. “Of course I will! You just worry about keeping Miles warm.”

Her cheeks colored.
Tara!
she mouthed, flicking a look toward Rolph. I chuckled at her as she jogged away.

Rolph picked up the reins and gave me a sideways glance, eyes traveling from my face to the graceful sweep of my skirt to my face again. “Are you comfortable?”

I nodded and then folded my hands demurely in my lap.

“Good.” He looked forward and flicked the horse into motion.

I kept my eyes to the side of the wagon as we set off, watching the snow roil in the wake of the horse. With its shield, it nosed through the drifts like they were nothing. Behind us, Fred raised his voice in a light song.

“The craftsmanship is amazing,” I said, admiring the way the mechanical beast moved. It walked more deliberately than a real horse, each step measured and smooth. It might as well not have had joints in its neck, it held its head so still. “Where did you get this?”

“It was left at the cabin.”

“What?” I couldn’t help a burst of startled laughter. I searched his face for mirth, but his expression was serious.

“I returned from a trip to find that someone had stayed in the cabin. They left this horse. Perhaps as payment or because they could no longer use it where they went.”

My eyes widened. “Must be worth a small fortune.”

He glanced at me. “Do you wish to drive it?”

“Oh! I won’t crash us, will I?”

Now he smiled. “No. It’s simple.” He held up the reins, as if to demonstrate that he was doing nothing more than holding them. “It will travel straight until you turn it. You tug the right strap for it to go right and the left to go left. As long as you pull, it will turn.”

I watched his hands deftly tug the straps. A slight twist of the wrist to make the horse steer at an angle, a deeper pull to make it turn outright. I was so entranced with watching his tendons move that I didn’t realize he was proffering me the reins.

“Oh!” I took them and then stared at the horse with the sudden realization that we were headed straight into the trees.

He must have recognized my stricken expression. He chuckled. “Here. May I?”

I nodded, heart pounding, and he leaned in to close his hands around mine.

“Like this.” He guided me gently to pull the reins to one side. I stared at the horse, but all of my attention was on his hands—their heat, the way they covered mine, their controlled strength.

When we were headed straight, he released me and sat back. My fingers felt suddenly small, cold and exposed. “And you figured out all of this on your own? How to operate it?”

“Trial and error.” He grinned.

I grinned back. I practiced little turns at first and then zigzagged us until Fred called out a complaint. “Hey! You trying to make me sick back here?”

“If it means you’ll stop singing, then yes!” I shouted back.

In response, he sang louder.

Rolph took the reins again. With a toss of the straps, the horse picked up speed. “How long have you been storytelling for?”

“For as long as I’ve been able to talk. But as a vocation, considerably less than that. I didn’t think about making money at it till I met Miles and Beth four years ago. At a Frost Fair, in fact. Fred joined us a year later. We picked him up at a tavern.” I twisted to face Fred. “Isn’t that right?”

He tilted his head back to give me an upside-down look. “What?”

I nodded and resettled in my seat. “See? Exactly.”

I turned my grin to Rolph only to realize he was looking at me, amusement lighting his eyes. I flushed and brushed my hair behind my ear, coyly avoiding his gaze. “There’s a long story behind that.”

“Oh? Well, we have a long path ahead of us.”

I threw him a smile. “All right. But don’t laugh. It all started with a chicken coop…”